I find sculpey excellent for sculpting faces. With their dilutant, you can almost sculpt with a brush. Without, it has a firmer consistency. Its not that strong so make sure you use a good armature if making a full figure. Strength is enhanced by accurately following baking instructions or even baking longer than recommended - but not hotter - it does burn!
I find that some colours are easier to sculpt with than others. Sculpey III's terracotta is my favourite as it shows the textures and folds well. For faces, I also like super sculpey (flesh coloured and cheaper than sculpey III. Super sculpey is actaually much cheaper than the small packets of sculpey III and I would recommend it for starters and experimentation. But it will harden and become unworkable with age.
As a dilutant or smoother, you can also use baby oil - perhaps without all of the benefits of sculpey's own dilutant. Make sure you use brush on a coat of sculpey dilutant to smooth out your work before baking. That will smooth out finger prints etc.
If you are going to paint sculpey, make sure its well sealed and undercoated as Paine's book notes that it is subject to developing a white surface bloom months after paint is applied.
Sculpey can be sanded, drilled or carved but in each case care mush be used. It is not as easily worked as epoxy putty and it does have a propensity to crumble and flake, aprticulalry if you have added new sculpey to old baked sculpey and have re-baked.
You can mix sculpey with magicsculp or other epoxy putties and bake - that will result in a blenidng of characterisitics of both materials. I would stay away from FIMO as my limited expereince is that it is tougher to sculpt with.
There are some good books on sculpting non-military sculpey figures that are available on Amazon and which I can direct you to if interested.
That's all I can think of right now.
Good luck
Colin
